Javier 'Chicharito' Hernandez wasn't born when Manchester United appointed Sir Alex Ferguson as manager in 1986.

Ryan Giggs, 39, has never known another club coach in his 23-year career.

Sir Alex Ferguson will be remembered as one of the best managers of all-time. (AP Images)

For most fans, Ferguson is an ever-present, chomping his gum on sidelines for longer than they've been able to chew solid food.

At the close of the current English Premier League season, Ferguson will retire. He is 71 years old.

For sheer longevity, none can match him. His personal trophy collection will demand a separate house and a map to keep track of all 49. He won 13 league trophies since the beginning of the Premier League, in 1992. That means that in the 21-year history of the EPL, Manchester United and Ferguson have won more than half.

Pick any year at random. The odds Ferguson won it are better than even.

Plus, he won two European Cups, five FA Cups, four League Cups. And four league trophies in Scotland beforehand.

Right now it's difficult to imagine how we will remember Ferguson in a decade, aside from really, really good at his job. The soccer landscape nearly takes him for granted at this point. Set pieces, FIFA's corruption, wage inflation, step-overs and Sir Alex Ferguson – his nose growing ever more purple – winning the Premier League. These are constants.

When history picks through the Scot's trophy-littered career, here's what it might admire most: his unnerving desire, how he transitioned from generations of players and his role in Manchester United's finances.

The day after Ferguson announced his retirement, the front page of The Sun, an English tabloid, featured a picture of a red hairdryer hanging from a hook. The caption read: “THE HAIRDRYER” and, in smaller print, “Manchester United 1986 – 2013.”

Ferguson's verbal rebukes come accompanied by enough hot breath and intensity that they earned the hairdryer moniker early on. He frequently banned journalists from Old Trafford and remained feisty into his septuagenarian years. Like whiskey, he mellowed somewhat with age, but kept the kick.

As his colorful expressions entered the soccer lexicon – “football, bloody hell,” “squeaky bum time,” “noisy neighbors” – his coaching wrote the manual. Ferguson especially excelled at rebuilding teams swiftly. The longest gap he went without winning the Premier League was three years, from 2003-04 to 2006-07.

By the end, the generations between players blurred, producing a consistently evolving roster of two or three key additions every summer. Manchester United challenged, and usually won, year after year.

The on-field success helped build the Red Devils into an economic behemoth. According to Deloitte, the club from the industrial town in Northern England posted the third-highest revenue in the world last year, only behind Real Madrid and Barcelona.

Ferguson may represent the good ole days – the era of pure British grit, of bloody headbands and pints after the match – but his success never went out of style. He mastered squad rotation, fluid tactics and the financial necessities to conquer the modern age.

The announcement of his retirement – a full decade after he initially decided to step down and then changed his mind – came as a surprise. That's because, had Ferguson continued, he would have learned faster than anyone how to solve the challenges of soccer management yet to come. He would have won the Premier League again. He would have found more teenagers and molded them into global superstars.

It's impossible to imagine Ferguson's powers diminishing.

For decades, opposition fans loathed him, begrudgingly respected him and secretly admired him, sometimes simultaneously. On Wednesday, when Manchester United confirmed his retirement, fans of every other team in the world sighed, “Finally.”

What's in a number?

Juventus won its 29th Serie A title on Sunday with a 1-0 result over Palermo. The club celebrated with a huge banner in the stands that read: “31.”

Huh.

Juve doesn't hide its distain for the verdict from Calciopoli, the 2006 scandal that relegated Juventus and stripped the Old Lady of two league trophies.

So while official Serie A records indicate that Juventus has won 29 scudetti, the club made sure to feature pennants with the number 31 prominently in every victory shot. The club also brazenly wears three gold stars above the crest on its jerseys, each representing 10 scudetti.

The whole ordeal is still pretty murky, but here's the skinny: Juventus was massaging the referee assignments in its favor. The police got involved, uncovering the tampering in 2006. Juve went down a division and lost the two most recent titles. Some other clubs received point deductions.

In court cases since, especially the ones surrounding former Juve general manager Luciano Moggi, it seems plenty of other clubs were substantially if not equally involved. However, judicial restrictions on the timeframe for permitted evidence means additional punishments or a revisit to the case is unlikely.

Which leaves us at Sunday. Juventus has rebuilt itself as the domineering force in Italy quickly and secured a second consecutive scudetto under Antonio Conte. Juve fans say it was the club's 31st. Official records say 29.

The truth lies with whoever edited the Wikipedia entry more recently.

Steady hands

Cody Cropper bounces around.

Between the posts, yes. But also between the Southampton U-21 and the first team. “Currently I'm back and forth,” he told Sporting News.

And between continents.

The 6-foot-4 goalkeeper frequently jets back to North America for U.S. U-20 national team duty. In March he helped the United States to the final of the CONCACAF U-20 Championship, which doubled as qualifying for the U-20 World Cup.

In April he returned for a training camp in California, picking up tidbits from former U.S. international goalie Kasey Keller and U.S. 'keeper coach Russell Payne.

“You get a lot of good input and you can try different things from different coaches,” Cropper said. “I've picked up quite a few things from Russell and quite a few things from Kasey this trip, and you just put that into your game.”

The latest thing Cropper has tried to add to his quiver is consistency. It makes sense. Amid all the bouncing, it's good to have some steadiness.

“Right now my focus is being more consistent with the [Southampton] U-21s and playing well at the World Cup,” Cropper said. “Those are my goals right now. I'm not focused on those further-along goals. I'm looking short term right now and concentrating on the next two, three months.”

Ahead of the World Cup in Turkey this summer, Cropper is back in England. Toni Jiménez, an Olympic gold medalist with Spain, is the goalkeeper coach.

“He teaches a European way,” Cropper said. “He tells me that every goalkeeping coach has their own way, and you just have to pick up the things that work for you.”

On the once or twice a week Cropper joins the first team (he says it depends on numbers), he joins Polish international Artur Boruc and 36-year-old Kelvin Davis.

“Training with them is very good because it's at a Premier League standard and that's where I want to be,” Cropper said.

Cropper first moved to England in 2010 as a 17-year-old. His British passport helped ease the way to Ipswich Town. In the summer of 2012, he joined Southampton.

“Things happened that I'm not going to say,” Cropper said of the end of his days at Ipswich. “Moving on to Southampton was the right move for my career. That's where I want to be right now. Breaking into the first team in Southampton is potentially the next step.”

The United States has provided a long list of goalkeepers who excelled in England, including Keller, Brad Friedel, Tim Howard and Marcus Hahnemann. Cropper could be the next addition, though one imagines the 20-year-old will need to begin balding first.